Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will visit Denver in April with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (Carolyn Kaster, The Associated Press)

A former Republican presidential candidate and a White House hopeful will visit Denver next month to discuss violent extremism in the world and how the United States should respond.

U.S. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are the featured speakers at the April 1 event hosted by The CELL and The Denver Post. Ed Henry, the chief White House correspondent for Fox News, will moderate the 7 p.m. program at the Denver Performing Arts complex.

The discussion will include the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Iran and the growth of extremism in Europe, according to the organizers.

The CIA has agreed to allow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to see photos of a dead Osama bin Laden.

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency agreed Tuesday to allow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to see photos of a dead Osama bin Laden to further confirm the Al Qaeda leader’s death, Sen. Mark Udall told the Denver Post this afternoon.

Udall, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said he had been urging the White House to release the photos to members of his committee to “provide more credibility,” to what happened.

“I think it just adds to the weight of the mission and adds to the weight of the evidence,” Udall said Tuesday. “We can add heft to the report.”

Headed into the Independence Day weekend, your Spotted This Morning correspondent is reminded of the raw and humbling fact that sometimes going to war is exactly the right thing to do.

But I admit I think the continued nation-building experiment in Afghanistan is a travesty.

I mention it this morning because the most fascinating primary race in Colorado now underway has revealed some telling facts about the candidates’ views on war of late.

But first, my little regression.

Special Forces troops have proven amazingly effective in hunting down and killing al Qaeda operatives throughout the region.

The Afghan government President Obama has dedicated tens of thousands of American lives to support is corrupt and completely uninterested in our safety or success.

Our own military commanders told Obama last year, before he decided to send 30,000 more troops to the notoriously difficult country, that fewer than 100 al Qaeda terrorists still resided in Afghanistan.

It’s a nightmare scenario that I hope is a complete figment of my imagination.

On the campaign trail, the then relatively unknown Barack Obama called for withdrawing from Iraq.

Let’s give Obama the full benefit of the doubt and assume that the young senator truly believed that invading Iraq was a bad idea from the first place – he was on the record early as opposed – and that getting out continued to animate him as the best policy.

But let’s also realize that, politically, Obama’s was the correct call for a Democratic primary challenger. Democrats and progressives passionately favored that view. And that view further allowed Obama to differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton, as Clinton voted to give Bush the power to invade.

Obama also scored points by arguing our interest ought to be with searching for Osama bin Laden and eradicating al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, or wherever the terrorists were hiding.

Again, let’s agree that Obama truly believed that was the best course of action (which, after all, shouldn’t be much of a stretch). But let’s also realize that politically the argument also had the benefit of appealing to Independents and those Republicans who had become disillusioned with George W. Bush.

It allowed the Democrat a way to appear strong in the war on terror, a critical credential for the general election.

But then-candidate Obama had no access to the kinds of military briefings that he has now as president. And today, a couple of years after he announced his bid for the presidency, the situation in Afghanistan is much different.

“Deteriorating,” says the top commander in the field. And though we now have more troops there than at any point during the last eight years, the last two months have produced the highest level of troop casualties so far.

Meanwhile, all indications are that military commanders have laid the necessary framework to suggest to Obama that many thousands of more troops, and perhaps many more months or years are needed to stabilize the country.

Republican leadership is reminding Obama of his pledge to remain strong and involved in Afghanistan. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt that they think going all in in Afghanistan is truly the correct course of action, it also is true that, politically, Republicans can likely score points against Obama should he reverse himself and call for a different approach.

Conservative columnist George Will is getting a lot of attention this week with his call for ending our attempt to stabilize the country. Will would rather we keep a smaller force focused on patrolling for al-Qaeda along the border with Pakistan and leave the nation-building to the Afghans.

Despite the outcry against Will’s suggestion, the columnist’s position seems far more in keeping with the argument candidate Obama made initially, before the situation evolved and before intelligence he received as president was available to him.

When it comes to matters of war, presidents ought to act apolitically and political parties ought to acknowledge that.

You should never send troops into battle unless it is truly necessary.

Obama shouldn’t let himself be pressured by political considerations for one second in his decision-making concerning our military involvement in Afghanistan.

We should let Obama know we don’t care anymore what he said about Afghanistan while running for president; that things change, and we expect him to adapt to those changes.

Now that Obama is commander in chief, we need to trust that he has accepted the duty without the slightest regard for the petty back-and-forth of politics.

But my question is this: Why would congress investigate a non-operational clandestine program that was kept, um, clandestine? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for congress to investigate why on earth a program to capture or kill top leaders Al Qaeda wasn’t operational in the first place?

Knocking off Al Qaeda leadership seems to be a far better alternative to losing more American lives in a never-ending war in Afghanistan.

Last week we learned that two former graduates of the program were top leaders in al-Qaeda.

Apparently, the U.S. plan for many of the remaining detainees at Gitmo – a majority of which are Yemeni – is to set up a similar, Saudi-inspired rehab program in Yemen partially funded by you and me and our tax-paying American friends.

That’s a plan that really inspires confidence.

I still say, let ‘em get rehab American style. A few weeks with Nurse Ratched and they’d be meek as kittens.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.